Qualifying for the UEFA Euro 2000 final tournament, took place throughout 1998 and 1999. Forty-nine teams were divided into nine groups. All teams played against each other, within their groups, in a home-and-away basis. The winner of each group and the best runner-up qualified automatically for the final tournament. The rest of the runners-up played an additional set of playoff matches amongst each other.

^Yugoslavia qualified in 1992, but was banned by the United Nations from all international sport.

Qualification seeding

The draw was made on 18 January 1998, in Ghent, Belgium. Germany were seeded first as holders. The other seedings were determined based on 1997 UEFA coefficient found by points per game in the qualifiers for UEFA Euro 1996 and the 1998 FIFA World Cup.[1][2] Since France qualified automatically for the 1998 FIFA World Cup as hosts, only their record in UEFA Euro 1996 qualifying was used. England qualified automatically for UEFA Euro 1996 as hosts, therefore only their record in 1998 FIFA World Cup qualification was used, as well as Bosnia and Herzegovina that had never competed in the European Championships, and FR Yugoslavia that were banned from UEFA Euro 1996. Andorra made their debut after admitted to UEFA in November 1996.

Team highlighted in bold qualified and italic participated in play-off.

Tiebreakers

If two or more teams finished level on points after completion of the group matches, the following tie-breakers were used to determine the final ranking:[3]

Higher number of points obtained in the matches played among the teams in question;

Superior goal difference in matches played among the teams in question;

Higher number of goals scored away from home in the matches played among the teams in question;

Superior goal difference in all group matches;

Higher number of goals scored in all group matches;

Higher number of away goals scored in all group matches;

Fair play conduct in all group matches (1 point for a single yellow card, 3 points for a red card as a consequence of two yellow cards, 3 points for a direct red card, 4 points for a yellow card followed by a direct red card).

Ranking of second-placed teams

The best runner-up of the entire group phase qualified automatically for the final tournament. To determine the best runner-up, a comparison was made between all of them. Only matches played against teams that finished first, third and fourth were regarded. Matches played against fifth and sixth placed teams were discarded, because some groups had more teams than others. After the best runner-up was found, all the others (eight of them) entered a random playoff to determine four more teams to qualify.